April 19, 2018 Lunch – Cowgirls in Santa Fe, Dinner – PPI BBQ. Twice Cooked Roasted Vegetables, and Steamed Asparagus

April 19, 2018 Lunch – Cowgirls in Santa Fe, Dinner – PPI BBQ. Twice Cooked Roasted Vegetables, and Steamed Asparagus

Today I made two ½ of a toasted whole wheat bagel smeared with cream cheese, and garnished with slices of onion and Lax and capers.

I ate one for breakfast and put the other one in a bag and put in my suit pocket and took it to Santa Fe with me to my 11:00 hearing in case the hearing went longer than I thought and I became hungry.  The hearing ended at 1:00 and we went to lunch at Cowgirls, so I brought the bagel back and will eat it tomorrow.

Cowgirls features BBQ and hamburgers.  Scott and Sammie got hamburgers and Sig and I got BBQ.  Sig ordered a rack of ribs.  I ordered a Sampler Latter with 4 or 5 slices of moist brisket, a mini rack of baby back ribs with 4 or 5 ribs that were slightly dried out, and an amazingly tender fall apart at the touch hind quarter of BBQ’d chicken.  The platter was served with a bowl of green chili, a small cup of rather sweet BBQ sauce, a bowl of beans, and side orders of coleslaw and potato salad; a serious amount of food.  I could only eat ½ of the meat , so I boxed the other 1/2. And took it home after lunch.

I had worked from 2:00 to 5:45 am, so I was too tired to cook and was happy to see Suzette had arrived home when I returned a bit after 4:00.

She created the dinner menu around the BBQ, the PPI Roasted Vegetables from last night and two PPI grilled lamb chops from an earlier meal.  Suzette added an additional potato to the PPI Roasted Vegetables and sautéed them in a large skillet with butter and olive oil to make cottage fries and vegetables.  She steamed the last 14 or 15 stalks of asparagus and heated the PPI BBQ and lamb chop in the microwave to create a simple, satisfying hot meal.  I love this sort of German cooking skill she seems to have in her DNA.  Sautéed potatoes added to any meat and a vegetable equals a meal.  I keep potatoes and several vegetable selections on hand all the time for just such occasions.

Sautéing the Roasted Vegetables gave them a different and more pleasing texture and accentuated the sweetness of the carrots and onions by caramelizing them.

There were no cold beers, so we opened a bottle of 2015 Creation Grosset Cairanne produced by Brotte, an Appellation Côtes Du Rhone Villages Protégé that I bought for $9.99 at Costco.  Let’s take a deep dive into this wine to examine why Costco is a good place to buy this type of wine.  First the wine:  it was rated by Robert Parker, perhaps the most prestigious wine rating service at 91 points.  Anything above 89 points is excellent on Parker’s rating scale, so the experts at Parker found this wine to taste a bit better than just excellent.  Here are the rating notes:

91
91 pts.Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate: 30th Dec 2016
The 2015 Cairanne Creation Grosset is a kirsch, strawberry and floral-dominated beauty that has plenty of texture, medium to full-bodied richness and no hard edges. I’m sure it’s smoking value.

Cost:  why I buy wine at Costco.  Since I am now in the wine importing business, I have become familiar with how wine is priced.  Without boring you and being very generic, the normal mark up for landed wine is 30% for the distributor and 30% to 100% for the retailer.  Costco only marks up its wine approximately 18% and because it is one of the largest sellers of wine in the US it can drive the distributors to reduce their price, probably because it probably takes direct delivery of wines from the ship, which saves distributors warehousing and handling costs, so they pass that savings on to Costco.  This wine is offered on several wine on line websites for 12.99 to $14.99/bottle.  So Costco is selling the same wine that garnered a 91 Parker rating for 23% to 33% less tan the lowest available retail price.  The reason I buy highly rated wines at Costco is because they are bargains, entirely due to the pricing structure.

The wine – now the tricky part.  How do you chose which wines to buy?

I look for well made wines by producers of quality wine.  Costco has done much of that work for us.  Here is the information on Brotte, the producer of this wine.

 Maison BROTTE is a family independant winery built in 1931 in Châteauneuf-du-Pape by M. Charles Brotte, one of the pioneer of bottling in the Southern Rhône Valley. Famous inventor of "La Fiole du Pape"


Our modest winery has been propulsed to the front of the scene with the creation in 1952 of our now emblematic Châteauneuf-du-Pape « La Fiole du Pape », originaly shaped bottle with a unique winemaking style. It is today the leading cuvée of its appellation, unriivaled by any other French producer.

Our activity of winemaker was largely developed thanks to exportations in the 50s, always animated with this pioneer spirit and firmly orientated towards the worlfd. The company is today present in 95 countries on the five continents.

Since 1970, thanks to the BROTTE Wine Museum in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we also welcomes 35,000 visitors a year on our estate.

For the last 20 years, in a concern of getting closer to the production and secure even a better quality control of its cuvees; we integrated the activity of winemaker for various Rhône Valley A.O.C’s in our cellar in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. This evolution started on the white wines and then developed on all the wines. This mean of supply, by selecting and buying the grapes, represents now more than half of the total production.

In 1991, in buying the Château de Bord, in Laudun, we also became Propriétaire-Récoltant in Côtes du Rhône Villages and Côtes du Rhône A.O.C.s. This activity has been developed with the addition of three new family estates: Domaine Barville in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Domaine Grosset in Côtes du Rhône Villages Cairanne and Domaine de l’Aube.

Furthermore, we have recently developed a new kind of agreement with local vintners, in which everyone brings its know-how and both parts are jointly and irremediably associated in the very long term on the name of the Estate. For example, we have been working for many years with “Versant Doré” in Condrieu, or “Marandy” in Saint-Joseph, “Bouvencourt” in Vacqueyras and “La Doucejoie” in Muscat de Beaumes de Venise.

Today managed by Laurent Brotte, grandson of the founder, you will be able to find Brotte wines through the traditional network such as restaurants, wine stores and private customers.

"BROTTE" is the family signature for our wines, our Domaines and Châteaux, our crus of the Southern and Northern Rhône Valley region

As stated above this wine is produced at Domaine Grosset in Côtes du Rhône Villages Cairanne.

Here is Brotte’s info on Domaine Grosset:
Situated at the bottom of the olf Cairanne, the domaine Grosset belongs to Alain Grosset, father in-law of Laurent Brotte. The Grosset family has always been very active in the cultural and associative life of the village, especially in the development of its appellation.

The domaine Grosset, spread over 10ha of land typicaly recognisable by its centenary old grenache vines and its highly qualitative sandy soil. These typicities linked to our family know-how makes Cairanne - Domaine Grosset one of our most popular cuvée.

The Mediterranean climate, dry and warm is also ideal for the perfect maturity of our parcels.

Cairanne is a small village on the eastern side of the Rhone River in the Rhone River Valley on the outskirts of Châteauneuf de Pape and 13 miles northeast of Orange.  The Brotte vineyard and Wine Museum is located in Châteauneuf de Pape.  So this is a local business that through fortunate location in one of the best wine regions in France and smart multigenerational management has grown into a wine making empire with affiliations with other significant producers in its region.  Domaine Grosset in Cairanne is one of those affiliated estates.

The wine was highly tannic when first opened but opened up into a floral fruity delicious wine after about twenty to thirty minutes.  If you want a wonderful representation of  a Côtes Du Rhone red wine for under $10.00 this would be a good choice.  I drink a lot of Cotes Du Rhone wines and I will be buying this wine again.  It is a bargain, as Parker stated.

Bon Appetit